


The First Time in Forever

by Catchclaw



Series: Mental Mimosa [319]
Category: Star Wars Sequel Trilogy
Genre: Dream Sex, F/M, Grief/Mourning, Happy Ending, Loss, Post-Star Wars: The Rise of Skywalker, Reunions, Soul Bond
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-12-23
Updated: 2019-12-23
Packaged: 2021-03-09 16:14:30
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,042
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21916495
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Catchclaw/pseuds/Catchclaw
Summary: She wakes up with the memory of a kiss. Of his body above hers and their fingers wound together, the smell of ash and something more in her hair.
Relationships: Rey/Ben Solo
Series: Mental Mimosa [319]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1012767
Comments: 16
Kudos: 92





	The First Time in Forever

**Author's Note:**

> Prompt: i only realized i was in love with u after u died and like 3 yrs later u come back as a fuckin angel or some shit and oh god you’re even cuter than i remember and i missed you like hell pls marry me. 
> 
> Prompt from this [generator](https://colormayfade.tumblr.com/generator%22).

She wakes up with the memory of a kiss. Of his body above hers and their fingers wound together, the smell of ash and something more in her hair.

He isn’t there when she opens her eyes, of course. He can’t be. He’s dead.

There are times when she forgets that, when it’s easy to, because his presence is stronger now than it’s ever been, now that she knows what his smile feels like against the bruised lines of her mouth, how it feels to have his heart beating beneath the palm of her hand.

But he’s gone now and she’ll never feel any of that again.

Maybe that’s why she clings to her dreams. 

Sometimes, when the sounds of camp, of other people's happiness, are too much, she’ll slip out through the trees and thread the moss until she reaches the river and stretch out under the stars. It’s cool there, caught between the wind and the damp, fervent earth. Some part of her still misses the desert, the dry forever heat that she’d once thought would never leave her bones. But it’s long gone know, almost forgotten, except when she lies down to sleep. She remembers how then, she’d dreamt of endless water; now, there is a river in her ears and all she wants to hear is the battered rustle of sand.

And his voice. Stars, how she aches for that. There was too much between them unsaid.

_ Because we didn’t have to_, he says when she sleeps, when her thoughts are silent and there’s only this, flickers of warmth in the Force. _ It may have been unspoken, but it was understood. Wasn’t it _?

_ I’d have like to have said it anyway. _ She combs a hand through his hair, the wild whip of it. _ And to have heard it, I think. _

His eyes close and he tips into her touch, his arm tight around her back. _ Yeah? _

_ Yeah. _

He shudders. So fragile, she thinks. So strong and yet so easily shaken. _ I love you, Rey _, he says.

She smiles and tastes her tears, ones she doesn’t shed while she's awake. _Ben. _ _ I love you, too. _

He kisses her then, licks into the bloom of her mouth and moans when their tongues meet, when she wraps her leg around his hip and pulls them together again, his heat rising between them, the spend on her thighs only just dry.

_ I need you_, she says when she can bear to let him breathe. _ Darling, please_.

He makes a soft, broken sound and all at once, he’s beneath her, one hand on himself and the other clutching her hip and it’s easy to take him like this, when she’s beautifully sore from before and their initial desperation has given way to something richer, deeper, more. And she loves to watch his face when she takes him, the way the tension of his body is mirrored in the taut lines of his lips, the way his fingers flex are her hips, and his eyes--oh, his eyes. The joy they hold when their bodies are flush, when she’s arched above him up and and up and up, so full that it’s hard to breathe, hard to do anything but dig her hands into his chest and know how much she loves him and that she can never, ever have him back.

_ No_, he says, firmer now, more certain as she starts to rock. _ Don’t think like that. Not now. Stay here, sweetheart. Stay right here, with me. I’m here now. I always will be. _

_ Yes_, she says into the starlight, the flicker within her already rising. _ Yes. Yes_.

He wants to touch her everywhere, always, but never more so than when they’re like this, when she’s above him and he’s pinned, a willing butterfly; she can feel his frustration that he can’t.

_ I love to watch you like this_. One hand on her breast, the other squeezing the heat of her thigh as he lifts his hips to meet hers. _ When you’re taking what you want from me. You’re the most beautiful thing I’ve seen. _

When she yanks his fingers to her clit, she’s bent over him, panting, the pleasure so close she can taste it, and oh Force, the noise that she makes as she breaks, as he rubs just right and pitches up inside and says her name again and again and loses himself inside her, a great shot of heat, and then there’s nothing but pleasure everywhere.

_ I don’t want to leave you_, she says when he’s curled around her, when the dream has settled into something warm and soft and safe. _ Why can’t I stay here forever? _

He kisses her neck. _ You can’t. We both know that. _

She closes her eyes, says what she shouldn’t. _ Then why can’t you come with me? _

_ Rey_. The word like a bruise. _ I can’t. _

_ But if the Force brought us together, why would it tear us apart? _

_ But it hasn’t, has it? We’re still together, even if it’s only here. This is a gift. _

_ It doesn’t feel like one. _ She feels her eyes prick. _ When I wake up out there, alone, it feels more like a curse. _

His arms tighten. His voice does. _ Don’t say that. _

_ It’s cruel, Ben. You must see that. To give us this for an instant and then take it away. _

_ The Force works in its own way. _ He sounds like his old self, stubborn and cross. _ We’re not meant to understand it. Believe me, I’m inside it all the time and I still have no idea how it works, or why it does what it does. You have to accept that. _

She sits up and glares down at him. _ No, I don’t! _

_ What’s the alternative, then? You spend the rest of your life mad at the Force for not giving you what you want? I’ve tried that. It doesn’t work. _

_ It gave me what I wanted and then it took it away. I have a right to be angry! _

_ Of course you do. But I’m telling you that investing in that anger isn’t going to get you anywhere. At least, no place that you want to be. _

_ Ben-- _

_ Would you rather not have this? _ he asks, very quietly. _ It’s ok. You can tell me. _

_ I didn’t say that. _

He looks up at her and for a moment, she can see Leia in him so clearly. So much sadness. _ Yeah, you pretty much did_.

Something in her spikes, a bitter flicker of fear. _ I hate having to leave you, that’s all. Sometimes I think it's worse than not having you at all._

She can feel it, the moment her mind starts to move back towards the world, towards real life, and for the first time, it scares her, because what if she’s ruined this with her anger? What if she’ll never see him again?

His hand finds her cheek. _ You were the best thing in my life, even if it was only for a moment, and I don’t regret anything that happened because in the end, Rey, it brought me to you. _

_ I know, but-- _

And then he’s pitching up on his elbow and he’s kissing her, firm and gentle. Forever.

_ I love you_, he says. _ I’ll love you forever. Now wake up_.

*****

  
When she opens her eyes, the sun is just above the horizon and the earth is cold beneath her back. The Force hums around her, echoing the river, but when she reaches for him, she can’t feel Ben in the stream.

A month goes by, two, and she doesn’t see him again in her dreams.

*****  
  


She stops sleeping. She takes on more meditation, long, slow walks in the forest away from her friends’ worried eyes. It doesn’t do any good. She can’t find him.

It’s worse than his death.

*****  
  


In time, the camp disbands. Finn and Poe head for the core worlds with Chewie and the droids; Rose and a bunch of the others charge gaily out towards the Rim. Some of the oldsters talk about staying on, after a few weeks, they shake Rey’s hand and climb into their cockpits and sail away, one by one, until Rey’s alone with the forest and its ghosts of what once was.

She’s tired. She’s so very tired, now. 

She eats. She walks. She trains, sometimes, when she can bring herself to give into the Force, but she always leaves it feeling emptier than before.

The colors of the world she once loved are dull now, all faded into a gray fog that never lifts, even in the brightest hours of the day. 

Weeks go by. The rains come. She doesn’t sleep.

****  
  


Then one morning, there’s a noise.

She knows all the noises of the forest. This isn’t one. 

She rises from the floor, her legs stiff from being folded, and calls her ‘saber to her side. Opens the door.

She’s halfway down the hall when she hears it again, louder now; it’s definitely coming from outside, from the clearing, the place where the last ships of the Rebellion once stood. Now, they’re gone and the plants they once crushed are growing again, revived by days of rain and months without the press of landing gear or running boots. Except--

That’s exactly what she can hear: the crush of unfamiliar boots, someone moving around in the new underbrush. Her fingers tighten around the ‘saber. There’s a being out there.

When she rounds the last hall and starts moving towards the base’s entrance, her heart is in her throat and she remembers:_ Oh. This is what it’s like to feel fear. _ Maybe that’s why the air’s humming, while she can feel the energy of everything that’s around her as she hasn’t in weeks. It’s not just fear she hasn’t felt, it’s anything, isn’t it? Huh. _ So this is what it’s like to feel alive. _

She waves the door open while she’s still a good 20 yards back. “Hello?” she calls, because she’ll be damned if she’ll cower. “Whoever you are, you need to leave. You’re not welcome here.”

The noise outside stops suddenly, startled. She can feel the not-noise of the being’s foot pausing halfway to the ground.

“Step away from this place and leave.” She manages the last 10 yards in a moment and hovers just inside the door. “Do you hear me?”

“Yes,” the being says, bewildered. “I hear you. But I don’t believe it. I must be dreaming.”

Every cell in her body freezes. She’d know that voice anywhere, but it can’t be. It’s--

“Ben?!”

She bolts through the opening and into the sun and he’s standing there, Ben is, dressed in black, his hair caught in the wind and his eyes wide and he’s beautiful, she thinks, one moment of crystal clarity. He’s the most beautiful thing she’s ever seen.

“Are you real?” he says into her hair when she throws herself into his arms. “You feel real.”

“So do you.”

“You’re not a ghost, are you? Or an angel?”

“No. I’m just me.”

His hand finds her face, his eyes bright. “Good.”

“You’re dead,” she tells him, because he is, isn’t he? “You were. I mean, I saw you, Ben. I _ felt _you die.”

“I was. I definitely was.”

“But you’re here. How can you be here? It’s not...it isn’t possible. Is it?”

“It shouldn’t be.” He brings her hand to his chest and presses it to his pounding heart. “But it is.”

“How?”

Ben grins. Stars, she’s missed that smile. “The Jedi. They thought we’d earned more than a moment, and I guess the Force listened. Or got tired of being yelled at. Maybe both. My mom was relentless, and my grandfather, too, and Master Kenobi, he really--”

She wants to hear it all; she will. But she needs his mouth on her more. 

“I don’t regret anything that happened,” she tells him later, when he’s buried inside her, when he’s sighing in her ear and giving her all she can bear. “None of it. Because in the end, my darling, _ oh _, my darling--it brought you back to me. Right where you belong.”

His breath burns her cheek and he shudders helpless in her arms. “I do,” he murmurs. “I do.”


End file.
